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Well Made Home

When you first walk through the doors, you might need a minute. Flashes of pattern—hundreds of different shapes and sizes—dance across your line of vision before your eyes adjust to the sheer amount of beautiful textiles before you.

Photo: Joseph Antonetti

Stuffed floor to ceiling with more than 100 vibrant pillows, this small shop in Marin County, California, is just the latest venture between design duo Kelly Bedford Willrich and Melanie Mount.

The former Pottery Barn executives opened their first design business in January 2016. Well Made Home was born out of their love for product—something they had moved away from in their years of rank climbing.

Photo: Aubrie Pick

“We were both ready for a change in our lives,” Mount says. “As you rise up in the corporate world you become less connected with product and more about management,” she explains.

With a deep love for product, the two set out to make their own—everything from window treatments to upholstery. “[The business] also stemmed from personally wanting to do these types of projects for ourselves and having a challenge doing it. So, we wanted to make it easy for our client base to be able to do that,” says Willrich.

Photo: Liz Daly

Well Made Home was born out of the idea that truly custom furniture, limited only by imagination, creates a lifelong product unlike anything your neighbors have, “which makes it fun,” says Mount. Using the relationships they cultivated before starting Well Made Home, the duo work exclusively with California craftsmen. “We knew from experience that what they made and the hand touch they put on it was such better quality,” says Willrich.

Photo: Liz Daly

Their favorite decorating tool? Color. And pattern. “We started this with a love of color, print and pattern,” says Willrich. In what they describe as a “dominantly masculine and neutral” industry trend of beiges and subdued colors, they see their store as a shining beacon of fun.

Photo: Joseph Antonetti

Fun is definitely one word used to describe The Cushion Shop, located just below their Marin County Mart Well Made Home design studio in Larkspur, California. The small store packs a wallop at around 120 pillows and 18 designer fabric lines available for customers to peruse.

Photo: Aubrie Pick

The 18 lines—available only to the trade—are the crown jewel of The Cushion Shop. Lines like Madeline Weinrib, Peter Dunham Textiles and Brook Perdigon are hard for the average customer to find without the help of an expensive interior decorator. “We’ve always had friends to ask us to help them” get access to these exclusive brands, says Willrich.

Photo: Joseph Antonetti

Without the cushion shop, many design enthusiasts would have to venture to a showroom, which Mount found intimidated many of their potential clients. “For many, the idea of going to the design center is daunting,” she says. It was in this lack of access and pestering by friends that the idea was born. Why not make a shop where anyone can access these beautifully designed fabrics?

Photo: Joseph Antonetti

Thus, they created The Cushion Shop.

Willrich and Mount describe their shop aesthetic as “maximalist.” They truly believe that “more is more.”

Photo: Aubrie Pick

They prefer to reject the typical trends you might see at your neighborhood box store instead opting for patterns of their youth. “We were missing things we grew up with that were classics,” explains Willrich. “These textiles that we have are—most of them—inspired by patterns that are thousands of years old,” she says. These lines are a play on the idea of what used to be—classic patterns reimagined in new ways with modern colors.

Photo: Liz Daly

The Cushion Shop works in tandem with Well Made Home to make bespoke pieces for their clients. Willrich and Mount have taken on projects ranging from single items to entire homes through their burgeoning businesses. Even though they are located on the West Coast, Willrich and Mount have been able to help clients add color to their lives across the country.